Remembering Through the Things You Cook
By Colleen K Pulley
One of the best ways to remember and appreciate someone you love is to share a recipe they have spent time cooking. I come from a long line of good cooks, and over the years I have enjoyed a bite of Grandmother's cobbler, Mom's Pumpkin Pie, Aunt Hattie's Pot Roast, and Cousin Claudia's Cookies and Boston Brown Bread. Cooking is one of those things that tie one individual to another.
My mother has been gone for many years, but it is as if she is with me in the kitchen, whenever I find one of her famous family recipes and lovingly prepare it. I have spent countless hours, over the years, with my children and grandchildren preparing recipes from the past.
When a recipe is shared, each of those countless individuals who lovingly prepared that recipe for their family, is being invited into your kitchen and home.
One of the recipes that is part of our family is my mother’s Banana Nut bread. My Mother was a great user of Bisquick. She had a recipe from the fifties that she had cut out of a magazine when I was growing up. I memorized that recipe and took it with me when I left home.
After my mother died, my father gave me a box filled with her old recipe books, and recipes, and there was the original Banana Nut Bread recipe, faded and stained. I slid it into a plastic sleeve and placed it into my recipe box.
In the 1990’s, Bisquick printed a recipe book featuring their favorite recipes from 1910 through the1990’s. I bought 4 of the books. One for me, and one for each of my daughters. On page 43 was their Banana Nut Bread recipe. I took my hand printed recipe and my mother’s recipe and made 3 copies and taped them onto page 43. As each of my daughters left home, I presented them with the recipe book.
Over the years I have experimented with some of the old family cookie recipes, perfecting them until finally I came up with the Pulley Secret Cookie Recipes. These recipes have been provided to my children to be shared within their families.
I have been more than willing to share my creations, bringing a batch of cookies to a neighbor, or sending a box of goodies out to a child far from home. There is something about opening a box sent from home with something you haven't had for a while. It is like a tie to where your roots are.
Cooking is a way for you to express your love to someone. I love going through the old recipe cards with faded, penciled comments in the corner. A recipe for fried chicken from my Mom said "Glen LOVES this!!" XOXO. I can well imagine what Mom meant by the note that Dad loved this!!
I have baked chocolate cakes, brownies, and innumerable quantities of cookies over the years. I have passed on copies of recipes and books I have used, like the Bisquick cookbook, to all three of my daughters. Remember this, when you cook with your children, you are creating a memory that can be recreated at some distant time, because the smell is imprinted in your memory as well. I cannot count the number of times I have sniffed a faint scent of pumpkin pie, and be brought back to my childhood, baking pies with my Mother.
Along with the hugs, and stories and activities, tuck in the times you spend together cooking, and enjoying a chance to sit down and eat a home cooked meal. One day one of your children or grandchildren may bring YOUR famous cookies to you. And be sure your family knows that fried chicken does not only come from Colonel Sanders, but from Mom, baked with love.
Just something to think about. Until next time...Colleen
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